Qualitative Research: Rethinking Boundaries and Expanding Frontiers

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel presents three papers that break new ground by expanding the boundaries of qualitative research, reconsidering methodological boundaries within qualitative research, and pushing qualitative research to address underappreciated inferential issues involving physical boundaries—namely, spatial units of analysis. Gary Goertz & Stephan Haggard consider how the realm of qualitative analysis can be extended from small and medium-N research to large-N research. Tasha Fairfield & Andrew Charman rethink methodological distinctions between within-case analysis and cross-case comparison. Hillel Soifer in turn evaluates how to handle spatial units in qualitative research, drawing on insights from the modifiable areal unit problem in quantitative research. Our chair and discussants, Andrew Bennett, Evelyne Huber, Craig Parsons, and Cassandra Emmons, bring a wealth of expertise on case studies, comparative analysis, and multimethod research. We hope to stimulate debate on the contributions that qualitative research can make to the discipline and its role in multimethod designs.

Sub Unit

• Division 46: Qualitative Methods

Individual Presentations

• Large-N Qualitative Analysis - Stephan Haggard, University of California, San Diego; Gary Goertz

• Unifying Process-Tracing and Comparative Analysis: A Bayesian Framework - Tasha A. Fairfield, London School of Economics; Andrew Charman, University of California, Berkeley

• Selecting Units of Analysis in Qualitative Research - Hillel David Soifer, Temple University

• Mapping Methods in Contemporary Political Science Research - Tranae Hardy, Georgetown University; Diana Kapiszewski, Georgetown University; Daniel Solomon, Georgetown University

Chair

• Andrew Bennett Georgetown University

Discussants

• Evelyne Huber University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Cassandra V. Emmons Harvard University